Crime is down, but decline lags in New York’s Brownsville neighborhood

Bishop Willie Billips, right, and his assistant Brother Jose Vella stand outside Faith, Hope and Charity Church of God in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Monday, Dec. 30, 2013, in New York, after hanging donated clothing on the fence. Billips, 51, a Brownsville native who specializes in working with gang members, credits New York Police Chief Ray Kelly and police commanders and police commanders with teaming up with the clergy and community activists in the neighborhood to try to curb crime. But year-end boasts by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that New York is the safest big city in America ring hollow in Brownsville, a neighborhood of entrenched gang violence that has proven stubbornly immune to strategies that have pushed crime to historic lows across the rest of the city. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Bishop Willie Billips, left, talks with a man during a visit to the Marcus Garvey Village apartments in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Monday, Dec. 30, 2013, in New York. Billips, 51, a native of Brownsville, specializes in working with gang members. Through his church and his outreach, Billips is working to make a difference in the neighborhood. Year-end boasts by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that New York is the safest big city in America ring hollow in Brownsville, a neighborhood of entrenched gang violence that has proven stubbornly immune to strategies that have pushed crime to historic lows across the rest of the city. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

NEW YORK >> Year-end boasts by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that New York is the safest big city in America can ring hollow in Brownsville, a Brooklyn neighborhood where there is a cycle of violence, silence and retribution and where crime reduction has lagged behind record lows across the city.

A burst of gunfire on neighborhood streets this past summer typified the frustrating cycle. A baby boy was struck in the head by a stray bullet and killed as he sat in his stroller. His father, who police believe was the target, refused to help police identify the gunman.

Two men have since been arrested in the shooting, which appears gang-related. Bishop Willie Billips, a clergyman who went to the scene that night to comfort the family, said the slow fuse of potential payback probably was lit.

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“With a lot of these guys, it’s a matter of time,” he said. “I’m watching for that.”

New York is on track to achieve another all-time low in homicides this year, and police department officials have credited initiatives targeting gangs and domestic violence with reducing murders across the five boroughs. The New York Police Department also has stood by its heavily criticized strategy of systematically stopping and frisking young men to combat illegal gun possession.

“Not long ago, these kinds of strong public safety numbers would have been unimaginable, but they have become reality, and that is simply extraordinary,” Bloomberg said last week.

A key to the success has been avoiding complacency, outgoing police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in an interview.

“Sound public policy says that you try to continue to reduce crime to zero,” Kelly said. “We know that is impossible, but we should still be striving for that goal.”

But community leaders in Brownsville say a big police presence doesn’t make up for better schools, more jobs and cleaner, better housing.

“This is not just about blanket police work, this is about economic development and job creation,” said Charles Barron, a longtime City Council member whose district includes the neighborhood. “If you’re serious about crime, instead of building Yankee Stadium, build some youth centers in our neighborhood, fund our schools and teach science and culturally relevant topics, build self-esteem.”

Homicides citywide were down more than 20 percent, to 333, for 2013, a record low, according to NYPD crime statistics. Killings have been cut nearly in half since Bloomberg took office.

But in Brownsville, the year-end homicide totals have fluctuated in the Bloomberg era, with spikes of 28 in 2004, 2007 and 2010. This year, where many large police precincts now typically see only a sprinkling of murders, or none at all, Brownsville has recorded 14, a new low, and two fewer than in 2012 but eight more than nearby Bedford-Stuyvesant.

A comparison of year-end tallies in Bloomberg’s first year in office, 2002, to those at the end of 2012 shows overall serious crime was down 30 percent, including a 25 percent drop in the once-violent South Bronx. For Brownsville, it was a 9 percent decline.

The bloodshed this year has included the wounding in February of an armed 16-year-old by police officers responding to a report of shots fired on a rooftop; a drive-by shooting in July that left six people on the sidewalk wounded; and the unsolved killing in November of a man by a gunman driving near a public school.

Brownsville, a small, working-class neighborhood in central Brooklyn home to mostly blacks and Hispanics, also has one the city’s highest concentrations of public housing developments. The problems that can come with that distinction help fuel a perception that the neighborhood is “stuck in a bad situation,” said Eugene O’Donnell, professor of police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“If you look at the revitalization of Brooklyn in other areas, the Barclays arena, the yuppies in Williamsburg, and then Brownsville does feel sort of stuck,” O’Donnell said. “It’s a bit of a sore thumb where there have been great strides in other areas in the city.”

The Rev. Cheryl Anthony, of the Judah International Christian Center, said she and others in the community have focused on changing mindsets and behavior, speaking to caregivers about gangs, helping the poor, providing support and sharing faith.

“It is a holistic approach,” she said. “It takes all of us working together. ... Private sector, the community, neighborhoods, everybody has to be at the table in order to address and solve the problems.”

It’s also up to residents to discourage the street culture that glorifies guns, said Billips, a clergyman who grew up in Brownsville and specializes in working with gang members. He has credited Kelly and police commanders with teaming up with the clergy and community activists there to try to curb crime.

“The gun symbolizes power,” he said. “As an example, they say, ‘He’s always strapped,’ ‘He’s always ready,’ ‘He’s always packing’ or whatever. It’s like a status. You’re known as the guy or the girl that nobody’s going to bother.”

One of the worst examples a senseless loss of life Billips has ever seen was the Sept. 1 shooting Antiq Hennis, the 1-year-old in the stroller. The bishop recalled the horror of being in the hospital room where the family identified the tiny body.

“They just kept saying, ‘We want to see the baby. We want to see the baby,”’ he recalled about the parents. “After seeing the body, that’s when the reality hit hard.”

He’s astounded that the father wouldn’t help police identify the killer.

“You kill my baby, there ain’t no such thing as ‘don’t snitch,”’ he said. “That whole mentality is sick.”